Pages

A few days ago I found the web site of a hitherto unknown cousin, Penny Howell, who is also descended from the Vause family, and in following up some loose ends on that family discovered another web site that deals with Isle of Axholme family history, Axholme Ancestry. It seems to be a remarkably useful site for anyone whose ancestors come from the Isle of Axholme.

Epworth, Lincolnshire, England (May 2005)

Our Vause ancestors seem to originate in Epworth in the Isle of Axholme, which is north-west Lincolnshire in England. There seem to be several Vause families in Epworth and in the neighbouring town of Belton, and the Axholme Ancestry site lets everyone put their families into a single database, which should make it easier to find out if there are any links between them.

St Andrew's Church, Epworth

Though they started in Epworth our Vause family moved around a bit, because they also lived in Fishlake and Thorne in Yorkshire, and my great-great grandfather, Richard Vause (1822-1886), was born in Hull, across the river Humber, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The whole area is sometimes called Humberside, which is a good geographical name, though some people objected to it because it was a short-lived administrative county that took people out of their traditional counties. But the Axholme Ancestry web site covers a lot of the neighbouring towns and cities as well, because ours wasn’t the only family that moved around.

St Oswald's Church, Crowle, Lincolnshire

Richard Vause’s father, John Vause (1784-1863), was born in Epworth. He was a maltster of Myton in Hull at the time his eldest son Richard was born. He lived at Thorninghurst, near Thorne, Yorkshire from about 1825-1835, then moved to Crowle, where he was an innkeeper of the Cross Keys commercial hotel.

There were other Vause families that lived at Crowle too, the database at Axholme Ancestry may make it a bit easier to find links between them.